Retribution

by Evelyn Drake

  There was a long pause on the other end. “I’m being told it’s Steve Turney, Sir. Upon being shot, the subject fell out of the warehouse rafters .”

  Doing his best to keep his gun trained on Gunderson, Michael rolled over and threw up. He returned his attention to Gunderson as soon as he could and used both hands to steady the badly shaking gun. Standing on legs barely able to hold him up, his eyes blurred with tears as he focused on his target. His teeth were gritted and his lips were pulled back in a snarl .

  With slow, exaggerated movement, Director Gunderson clicked off, ending the phone call. Holding up his hands, one holding the stone and the other his phone, he said, “Nothing’s changed. Not really. Our deal is still in place. You are a free man. This case will be buried and you will never be a subject of one of our missions ever again. I can do this for you, but I have to live. You kill me, the deal dies with me. There will be no one to set it up if I die. I live and I return to Operations, then I report that you are to forever be considered a ghosted asset. You will never be considered a threat to Operations again, even if your identity and location come to our attention again. You will be able to move forward with your life.” He paused. “This will be true of Steve as well .”

  “Steve’s dead!” Michael screamed, violently shaking the gun for emphasis .

  “There are different levels of dead within Operations. For a ghosted asset, all associations of the asset are considered null. They do not fall under extended scrutiny. You would be free and clear. Everything about your life—whatever you wanted it to be—would be free and clear of evaluation by Operations .”

  A sob tore from Michael’s chest and, lowering the gun, he sank to a squat and allowed the gun to dangle in his hands. Even in his grief, his trust grew in Gunderson’s words when the man didn’t rush him to gain control of the gun .

  Nodding his head, tears falling from his eyes, Michael nodded consent. Their deal would hold. He would walk away a free man from both the Family and Operations .

  He would put into motion the plans for a life that he and Steve had made .

  He would honor the man he loved .

  He would walk away—alone .

  26

  Michael

  O ver two and a half hours away sat a seventy-foot sailing yacht by the name of Grace, Go I . But it wasn’t what Michael needed now. What he needed was to find Steve, to see him with this own two eyes .

  “He’s not dead. He can’t be dead,” Michael whispered as he climbed out of a midnight blue Mercedes Benz C-class. It was his latest snatch and grab, and he’d be done with it as soon as he reached the marina. But he wouldn’t leave, not yet .

  Looming above him were the still open bay doors of the abandoned warehouse from which he had originally fled. It was the moment when his entire life had changed, and the moment that had put him on a direct path to meeting and falling in love with Steve .

  It was the moment that would forever be marked as the before and after fulcrum of his life .

  Biting his lip, Michael’s hand twitched with the desire to reach for the gun tucked into the waist of his jeans. He wanted to pull it out. He wanted to be ready to defend himself in the event that any of Operations people were still on the premises. But he resisted in the hopes that if there were people on the premises, maybe they would take his life too, and he wouldn’t be trapped having to work through the pain of having lost the love of his life .

  That is what Steve had been to him, he knew—the love of his life. Any doubts of it had been cleared away during the week that they’d had together at Dr. Grunion’s home. Not hunted and not fighting for survival, they’d had the opportunity to just be. And it had been bliss .

  Taking a halting breath that threatened to choke in his chest, Michael gulped down his rising fear of what he would find. He made his way inside the huge, cavernous building. With nothing to buffer the sound of his footfalls, the inside of the building was so large that the sound didn’t even reach the sides to echo back at him .

  Turning his eyes upward, he searched the high rafters as if he could see a ghostly replay of the moment when Steve had fallen. He tracked his eyes back, trying to pick the spot where he had laid in waiting to see if Monica would fall in line or if she would declare an ongoing war to find and destroy them .

  Michael stopped, closed his eyes and hung his head. “If only she’d given up,” he whispered. Steve would have never taken the shot that ended her life, and likewise, Steve would still be alive .

  Opening his eyes, the world before him was blurred through his crying eyes. He scanned the space, picking out the spot most likely to have been where Monica and her crew had stood, several hundred feet in front of him. He looked again at the rafters to determine the most likely spot where Steve had been, and then he began walking a line that followed that rafter from one side of the warehouse to the other. There, he shifted forward a rafter and repeated the process, walking the rafter’s line until he reached the warehouse’s other side. Then, he did it again .

  One third of the distance into the warehouse’s center, Michael stopped. To his right stood a dried, red-black stain of a substance that had recently been liquid. It had pooled in one spot and then had run in a stretched and winding leg. There was a smear to it on one side as if something had been dragged away .

  Forgetting to breathe, Michael stepped to it. With his body shaking uncontrollably, he fell to his knees before the spot where Steve had died. A great siren wail of grief tore from his lungs as he arched his head back, the sound transforming into one of rage as his hands balled into fists upon his thighs .

  Smoothly standing up again, Michael pulled the gun he carried out of the waist of his jeans and he opened fire. He aimed high as if he could shoot down the heavens that had stolen his life’s love, as if he could rip heaven and make it give Steve back. His anguished screams were animal, primal, and held no reason. The gun recoiled in his hand until all of its bullets were spent, but the screams in his chest raged on and his finger pulled at the gun’s trigger with an impotent wrath that fueled his inner tempest of hate rather than soothed it .

  A sound behind him made him whirl, and Michael pointed the gun as he turned. Toward Steve. He let the gun slip free and fall to the hardened concrete with a clatter. Opening his eyes, he looked again, wondering if his need to see a living Steve had fooled him, but he was there. Alive .

  Twenty feet away, Steve took staggered half steps with one foot dragging. He was pale and blood painted one side of his face. One one side, blood oozed freely down his wet, plastered shirt. But through it all, his eyes had laser focus and they stared at Michael with a singular purpose .

  His frozen shock past, Michael broke into a run to cover the distance between them. When he slowed and took Steve into his arms, Michael could hear the rattle of his breath. Seeing him up close, he could see the blood tinged bubbles that collected at the corner of his mouth .

  “Baby,” Michael said with a sob. With his arms around Steve, it was as if Steve’s last strength was spent, and he melted in Michael’s arms. Michael did his best to hold him up but finally had to let the bigger man sink to the floor. “Don’t leave me, baby. Please, oh god, don’t leave me .”

  Steve lifted a hand to cradle Michael’s face. He didn’t try to speak. He just stared as if what he was giving to hold on was everything he had to give .

  Michael tried to lift Steve, and Steve let him without complaint, his gaze never wavering from Michael’s face. But raising the bigger man was more than Michael could do, and Michael had to lay him back down for fear that he would drop him .

  “Don’t you fucking die, you hear me! I’m going to go for the car, and you had better be alive when I get back!” Michael looked into Steve’s eyes, searching for some sign of promise, but Steve gave none .

  Ripping himself away from Steve, Michael ran as fast as he’d ever run to the car. He was in and driving within two seconds of reaching it, and the tires made a shrill screech when he brought the car t
o a stop next to Steve’s motionless body .

  Jumping out of the car, its engine still running, Michael hurried to Steve’s side .

  “No, no!” Michael screamed. Steve’s eyes were open but they were devoid of focus. Dropping an ear to Steve’s chest, Michael held his breath as he listened .

  There! He heard a faint heartbeat .

  Opening Steve’s mouth, Michael breathed for him, forcing air into Steve’s lungs until the man coughed and wheezed before seeming to deflate. But his eyes had focus again—on Michael .

  “Okay, we’re gonna do this, babe,” Michael said through his tears. “We’re getting you into this car and then we’re getting you help .”

  Steve managed a half nod that he understood, and Michael nearly cried out in relief .

  Michael felt as if he’d pulled three muscles getting the big man into the car, but he managed it. Cupping Steve’s face, Michael begged him again, “You hold on for me, babe, okay? You hold on. I’m going to drive and you’re going to hold my hand the whole way. You’re going to let me know you’re still with me, okay. You get into trouble, I’ll stop and we’ll work it out. I’ll fucking break every rib you have giving you CPR if that’s what it takes but I won’t fucking lose you, you hear me?” Tears streamed down Michael’s face and fell on their joined hands, and Michael lifted their hands to his lips so that he could kiss the hand that was so dear .

  Steve gave him another half nod, his gaze fixed to Michael’s .

  “Okay then, let’s do this .”

  Epilogue

  S teve lounged in the warm Mediterranean sun in Bermuda shorts and nothing else, save for the pair of Maybach sunglasses he’d won in a poker game during a stopover near Milan a fortnight earlier. The sea’s gentle waves rocked the Grace, Go I in a lullaby all its own, that made his iced beer hardly necessary to drag him into a healing restful afternoon nap .

  High on the right side of his torso was a pink scar, fading more with each week that passed. And true to his word, Michael had stopped the car to break ribs in an effort to bring him back to life—twice. Healing had come slow, but the rest had been fantastic .

  Steve opened his eyes at the sound of footsteps, lifting his sunglasses to perch them on top of his head. Michael had tanned faster than he had, and his hair had lightened in the sun. He wore white canvas pants which he had rolled up in large, sloppy cuffs halfway up his calves. And, like Steve, he wore nothing else beyond that .

  Steve’s stomach growled at the sight of the tray of food Michael carried. The sound brought a crooked smile to his lips, and he sat up and swung his legs off the lounger, and patted the space next to him .

  Taking Steve’s cue, Michael took the bottom of the lounger and sat the tray of food between them. Leaning forward, the two men enjoyed a slow, lingering kiss without a thought for any passers-by or lookie-loos around them. The closest thing to a rebuke they got was a catcall from a passing boat .

  Michael broke the kiss to wave at the passing boat but Steve, his fingers lightly touching Michael’s chin, returned his focus to the man he loved .

  “Have I said thank you yet today,” Steve asked, rubbing the tip of his nose against Michael’s .

  “Mmmmm,” Michael moaned. “This morning, three times. I think I might need to cut back on your vitamins,” he laughed .

  “Don’t you dare,” Steve said, lifting himself on thighs of steel as he slid his hand behind Michael’s neck to take the man in a deeper kiss. Michael’s fingers curled into his chest, and it made Steve moan with the knowledge and memory of how the man could make him feel .

  The rumble of his stomach growling again brought another moan to Steve’s lips, a different moan, and he pulled away reluctantly and sat back down .

  “Crab ceviche?” Steve asked, dropping his gaze to the tray of food. He hooked Michael’s foot with his hand to lay Michael’s calf over his knee. His fingers trailed patterns on Michael’s bare skin with an absentmindedness that spoke of the hundreds of times before that he’d done just that same thing. He looked up into the eyes of the man he loved and was caught off guard when Michael laughed .

  “What?”

  “You, that’s what! You and those damn puppy dog eyes. The way you look at me. You melt me,” Michael said, leaning forward to steal another kiss. His expression sobered as his hand lifted to stroke Steve’s cheek. “I didn’t know it could be this good. I had no idea .”

  “You’re telling me that you had all those other boyfriends before me, all those many lovers,” Steve teased, a giant grin on his face, “but somehow, among them all, I’m the best? Little ol’ virgin me ?”

  Michael laughed, his smile stretching from ear to ear. “First of all, there are no boyfriends here, or do I need to remind you of our wedding ?”

  “I’d much rather you remind me of our wedding night,” Steve said, getting in another kiss as his finger pulled at the waist of Michael’s pants .

  “Mr. Gammot, what would everyone say if I let you have your way with me right now ?”

  “I doubt I’d hear them over my moans,” Steve laughed, his lips against Michael’s. But then his stomach growled again and with a groan, he gave in and sat back. “What?” he asked, seeing Michael’s bright smile still shining on him .

  “You. I’m so in love with you.” Michael’s smile faded. “And I’m so proud of you. You’ve come so far, so fast. You’ve healed so much .”

  Without thought, Steve’s fingers went to his ribs and gently pushed, exploring. “It did make for an interesting wedding night,” he said, averting his eyes with a small blush .

  “I had to be gentle with my guy .”

  Steve’s blush deepened. “Shut up and eat,” he finally said as a way to save himself any further embarrassment at being gushed over. Yet his tight hole throbbed with the need for Michael’s special attention. He knew that all he’d have to do was ask and Michael would lead him below to explore more fully just how much his body had healed. But the lunch Michael had put together beckoned to not only his hunger but also his still-healing body .

  Picking up one of the clear glass bowls, Steve scooped up a spoonful of fresh crab meat, tomato, and cucumber and held it out to Michael’s ready lips. He had to fight the urge to kiss him again when a look of pleasure lit his face. Steve groaned when he took a bite himself .

  “You’re too good to me,” Steve said, taking another bite as Michael collected his own bowl .

  “That’s not possible,” Michael said, giving Steve’s hip a nudge with the bare foot of his propped up leg. He took another bite and then looked at the skies. The seasons were shifting. “Where to next?” he asked, returning his attention to Steve .

  Steve shrugged as he rubbed Michael’s leg. He took a deep breath as if he were about to say something that had been weighing on his mind, something that mattered to him. “What about a home? Iceland, like we talked about. Get a piece of land near the ocean, someplace we could leave if we ever needed to—but someplace where we could put down roots, become a part of a community. Lay our heads in the same beds in the same place every night. I think back, and the favorite time I’ve ever spent with you was that week we spent with Professor Grunion. I want that again. I want it with you .”

  Michael’s eyes shone with tears, but he held them in check. “There’s nothing I want more,” he said, leaning forward to give Steve another kiss. His tears escaped down his cheeks. Pulling away, Steve’s thumb brushed them away .

  “You and me, kid,” Steve said, holding Michael’s face as Michael kissed his palm. His heart felt as if it had swollen inside his chest enough to make his ribs hurt .

  “All the way,” Michael said. “Forever .”

 

 

 
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